Guci Tegal: A Huge Natural Hot Water for a Fun Vacation

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A few months ago, I went on a vacation with some of my friends. We went to Guci, a natural hot water bath located in Tegal town. We came here using a bus from Semarang City and stopped on Tegal Terminal.

From there, we went on again using a minibus to Tuwel Village. It took us 30 minutes from Tuwel to Guci Baths. But we quite enjoyed the trip as the view was amazing. When we almost reach our destination, we could see a Pine Jungle with a mountain on the background.

Because we came there during school holidays, this place was quite crowded. We had to wait in line to buy tickets. The ticket costed us $0.5 per person. Normally it was just $0.5 person. The ticket was being more expensive during holidays.

There were several baths here; some are open baths for publics and some other were closed bath tub for personal usage. Because we planned to have fun, we chose the public baths so we could play along together. We agreed to have some personal tub later after we done playing.

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The hot water in Guci Baths came out from several natural waterfalls or water fountains. The most crowded public baths is the Pemandian 13 (Bath of 13). Apparently, this bath is very popular due to its myth.

People told us that the water was a gift from the Queen of Southern Ocean called Nyi Roro Kidul. It is said that the Queen’s dragon was the reason why the water could be hot. People believed that if they took a bath here during midnight, their prayers would be granted.

I and my friend never believed to such things. So we went on to a less crowded waterfall. The water’s temperature was perfectly warm. It contained no sulfur so we would not need to be worried about chemical poisoning.

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While we were enjoying our bath and playing along on this public bath, we overheard a kid asked her mom to move to a water boom. To our curiosity, we asked them about what water boom they were talking about. Good thing they were friendly. They answered that there was a hot water boom nearby this Public Baths. The water came from another fountain around this area.

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Hearing about this, I and my friends got excited to go to the water boom. So we got out of the baths quickly. We agreed to skip the personal hot tub and get dressed up. We then went to the water boom right away using public transportation. It really was a short trip to go from Guci Baths to Guci Mas Water Boom.

In Guci Mas Water Boom, we had to buy tickets again. The tickets, as expected, were more expensive than its normal price. During normal weekdays, each ticket is sold for $1.5 . But during holiday like that time, it costed us 30,000 per person.

Coming inside, we could see several swimming pools and other facilities. There were three swimming pools. The Oval Pool was intended for children. It was really shallow and had a huge water pot that pours water in high velocity every several minutes. It would be too childish if we swim in there, so we skipped it.

And then we found a pool with medium depth. There were slides on it so we decided to try this one out. But after a few while, we realized that there was still another bigger pool. This one we tried on was just the Medium Pool intended for teens or adults who could not swim well enough. So we got out of the pool and went on to the real main pool.

The main pool was wider and had a better slide set with spiral game on it. It was more fun for us to play along here. Besides this main pool with slides, there were also several outbound pool games such as Flying Fox and Rope Bridge.

All those games are above the pool. So if we fell down, it would feel fun instead of hurts. We had really fun especially with the Flying Fox. We intentionally fell down for several fun because we liked the sensation of falling down and drown ourselves for a while.

Playing in a pool made us hungry. So we went out of the pool to take the snacks we brought. We sat down on a side and relax while enjoying our snack. Our sight then found a soaking pool. It was a small pool for people to relax and soak their selves in a hot shallow pool. We were not interested in trying this one out as we had enough soaking in Guci Baths before.

But then my friend found something else that seemed to be more amusing; Cascade Stream. The Cascade Stream is an engineered pool for simulating a cascade of sea streams. We never knew who it feels like to be in a cascade of water streams, so we got really interested for this object. We sat down a few more minutes to let our stomach digest the snack we ate. And then, we walked to the Cascade Stream.

This Cascade Stream was so much fun if you were not afraid of height or water. All of us were screaming together as we cascaded. But, our screams were different from each other. Most of us were screaming in excitement. But one of my friends was screaming because we felt really scared. She did not want to ride it again. So she waited on a side while the others were trying to ride for once again.

It was almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon when we finished cascading. So we decided to have a lunch. Luckily, there was a restaurant in Guci Mas so we did not have to go outside. But before going to the restaurant, we went to the bathroom first to rinse off, take a bath, and get dressed up again.

The meal was delicious and we were already satisfied with our water play. Also, it was already late afternoon. So we had to come back. But we did not mind because we had a lot of fun during this vacation.